An insight into the highs and lows of life with a prosthetic leg

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A Day of Racing

I thought I’d give you an idea of what happens on an average day of racing World Cup Snowboard Cross. They are never average and always a lot more complicated than this, but you’ll get the general idea of what I’m doing!

6.45am: Wake up, get ready and have breakfast. This varies depending on where I am, what I’ve got, whether it’s a hotel or apartment etc. but my ideal breakfast is porridge with banana and a boiled egg, and a mug (/glass??) or tea or coffee.

7.30am: Leave apartments, drive about 10 minutes to the resort we’re racing in and get up to the race area.

8.30am: Course inspection opens and we slide down the course with our coach, looking at the different features and discussing the best approaches to different turns/roller sections/kickers etc.

9.30am: Training opens and you get one or two runs down the course to prepare for racing. I’ve been doing one careful run and then one race pace run. I like to get my fall out of the way in training so then I can stay on my feet in my qualification runs and heats. (I wish… One fall a day would be good progress.)

10.15am: Racing begins. Stand around posing for the camera or wondering what I’m doing with my life for a while whilst other categories race.

10.30am: As they get into my category I get my legs moving and my body warm. Then strap in and do two qualification runs. Then people with the top 8 or 16 times qualify for heats. We then do knockout head to head races in boarder cross, where you race down the course like this:

1.30pm: Finish racing, have some lunch.

3pm: Prize giving

4.30pm: Get home, recovery walk or spin, stretch and roll

5.30pm: Wax board for tomorrow and grab whatever time there is to sit down and have my leg off for a bit. As you can see I look really happy – waxing every night is a really good fun thing to do, probably the highlight of my day in fact. I’d recommend it to anyone…

7pm: Dinner (of very varying quality, depending on what is being provided)

9pm: Run a bath and sort my stuff out for tomorrow. Get in and desperately try not to fall asleep in it.

10pm: Have a little think about racing tomorrow and visualise myself going down the course successfully a few times if I know it.

10.15pm: Get into bed.

10.16pm: Realise I haven’t scraped the wax off my board. Cry a little bit inside for a few minutes and debate with myself whether it’s that important to do right now. Yes it is. Out of bed but it’s way too cold to go outside to do it so sitting on the kitchen floor with a towel is the only way…